A Cathedral Singer | Page 9

It sounds dreadful!"
"Then why did he try to call himself James the Greater? That sounds
dreadful too. As far as size is concerned he is no bigger than the others:
they are all nine and a half feet. The Archangel Gabriel on the roof, he's
nine and a half. Everybody standing around on the outside of the roof is
nine and a half. If Gabriel had been turned a little to one side, he would
blow his trumpet straight over our flat. He didn't blow anywhere one
night, for a big wind came up behind him and blew him down and he
blew his trumpet at the gutter. But he didn't stay down," boasted the
lad.
Throughout his talk he was making it clear that the cathedral was a
neighborhood affair; that its haps and mishaps possessed for him the
flesh and blood interest of a living person. Love takes mental
possession of its object and by virtue of his affection the cathedral had

become his companion.
"You seem rather interested in the cathedral. Very much interested,"
remarked the man, strengthening his statement and with increased
attention.
"Why, of course, Mister. I've been passing there nearly every day since
I've been selling papers on the avenue. Sometimes I stop and watch the
masons. When I went with Granny to the art school this morning, she
told me to go home that way. I have just come from there. They are
building another one of the chapels now, and the men are up on the
scaffolding. They carried more rock up than they needed and they
would walk to the edge and throw big pieces of it down with a smash.
The old house they are using for the choir school is just under there.
Sometimes when the class is practising, I listen from the outside. If
they sing high, I sing high; if they sing low, I sing low. Why, Mister, I
can sing up to--"
He broke off abruptly. He had been pouring-out all kinds of
confidences to his new-found friend. Now he hesitated. The boldness of
his nature deserted him. The deadly preparedness failed. A shy
appealing look came into his eyes as he asked his next question--a
grave question indeed:
"Mister, do you love music?"
"Do I love music?" echoed the startled musician, pierced by the
spear-like sincerity of the question, which seemed to go clean through
him and his knowledge and to point back to childhood's springs of
feeling. "Do I love music? Yes, some music, I hope. Some kinds of
music, I hope."
These moderate, chastened words restored the boy's confidence and
completely captured his friendship. Now he felt sure of his comrade,
and he put to him a more searching question:
"Do you know anything about the cathedral?"

The man smiled guiltily.
"A little. I know a little about the cathedral," he admitted.
There was a moment of tense, anxious silence. And now the whole
secret came out:
"Do you know how boys get into the cathedral choir school?"
The man did not answer. He stood looking down at the lad, in whose
eyes all at once a great baffled desire told its story. Then he pulled out
his watch and merely said:
"I must be going. Good morning." He turned his way across the rock.
Disappointment darkened the lad's face when he saw that he was to
receive no answer; withering blight dried up its joy. But he recovered
himself quickly.
"Well, I must be going, too," he said bravely and sweetly. "Good
morning." He turned his way across the rock. But he had had a good
time talking with this stranger, and, after all, he was a Southerner; and
so, as his head was about to disappear below the cliff, he called back in
his frank human gallant way:
"I'm glad I met you, Mister."
The man went up and the boy went down.
The man, having climbed to the parapet, leaned over the stone wall.
The tops of some of the tall poplar-trees, rooted far below, were on a
level with his eyes. Often he stopped there to watch them swaying like
upright plumes against the wind. They swayed now in the silvery April
air with a ripple of silvery leaves. His eyes sought out intimately the
barely swollen buds on the boughs of other forest trees yet far from leaf.
They lingered on the white blossoms of the various shrubs. They found
the pink hawthorn; in the boughs of one of those trees one night in
England in mid-May he had heard the nightingale, master singer of the

non-human world. Up to him rose the enchanting hillside picture of
grass and moss and fern. It was all like a sheet of soft organ music to
his nature-reading eyes.
While he gazed, he